Digital Radio - Technical

Yeah @AJ1 mentioned this as well. Its a shame it never took off.

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I’ll get in touch with ABC. Why are SIDs and PIs not consistent for one station? In the UK there is one SID and one PI for a station nationwide. When listening to Radio 1 a few years ago the DAB and FM switching back and forth was seamless. In Australia it seems unique SIDs and PIs are often set for each transmitter site so switching doesn’t work correctly. It would at least be good to get a consistent code across SE Queensland. Would also be good for DAB to FM switching in tunnels.

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:+1:

Others in this forum could answer this question better than I can, but in short ‘the powers that be’ decided not to allow this in Australia, hence they are different.

Several of us in the RDS Forum have complained about the lack of an encompassing agency that can issue & organise effective PI (& SId) codes for all radio stations types in Australia. CRA tried, but many here would conclude or argue that they have failed at this, particularly with RDS PI codes for the non commercials).

Good point, for the tunnels here without leaky coaxial rebroadcasting of FM/DAB+ radio stations, although given the frequencies of both, with longer tunnels, they’d likely both experience signal drop off within seconds of each other - I suspect…

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The official CRA guidelines actually discourage implicit linking of PIs and SIDs. See page 4 of this doc: https://codes.dra.com.au/attachments/CRA-ENG-BN072%20v0.99b%20-%20FM%20PI%20and%20DAB%20SId%20codes.pdf

Edit: @ozbark beat me to it

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All good Anthony. It’s good to have the official CRA references, (which I had read a few times).
There’s another document in their archives there too that I have looked at once or twice that allocates huge swathes of SId code ranges to DAB+ stations across most of the LAPs in both the existing city DAB+ areas & regional LAPs throughout Australia, leaving little number availability for RDS PI codes - at least unique ones. One would look at the document & incorrectly assume that there’s to be a massive rollout of DAB+ across the country - but that hasn’t been the case thus far & unlikely in several regional areas for the foreseeable future.

Interesting! I hadn’t paid much attention to this one before.

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Actually a “use it or lose it” for DAB is whats needed, commercials must use DAB or if they think its not viable or worth the investment, allow others to operate DAB.

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No, and it’s absolutely dumbfounding.

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Maybe ARN are worried it will take too many listeners off KIIS?

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Probably. Especially as they’re actively driving away 97.3’s older audience. But surely they’d rather they would go to an ARN station rather than Triple M or 4BH.

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Yet CADA is never a threat to KIIS. :slight_smile:

They should have made 4KQ 97.3 FM , done a deal with SEN to use the name. The River can be on its own serving the “KIIS” market in Ipswich and DAB.

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It seems crazy that the CRA have come up with a way to set SIDs and PIs that eliminates one of the best features of RDS and DAB which is auto-tuning. If Triple J has one consistent code then you could drive from Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast without touching the dial. Also for the commerical DAB national stations e.g. OLDSKOOL 90s driving between Brisbane and Gold Coast means manually re-tuning when it should just handover. The only difference between the Brissie and Goldie stations are the ads.

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Definitely not, and ARN have gutted it with only live announcers at Breakfast and Drive.

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Ideally that would be great. I’m informed that there can be different news services in different regions at different times. I have no idea if that applies between Sunshine Coast, Brisbane & GC though for ‘triple j’. :man_shrugging:
Then DAB+ output compared to FM transmitted feeds (speaking generally rather than mentioning a specific radio station) from my experience here in Sydney are delayed compared to the various FM transmitted outlets & perhaps that would cause an irritation to the listener with automatic switching between DAB+ & FM outlets for the same station.
The vehicle user does have the option to turn on/off linking of course.
Others here know more about this than I.

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Yes, with Sydney, DAB stations are usually around 10-15 seconds behind their FM broadcasts. I imagine it’s similar in other cities too.

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Yes 10 second delay here.

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Gold Coast SCA DAB is having a major problem this afternoon - Jittering and cutting out on every SCA Station incl locals. @mcpaton

Hot Tomato’s stations on same MPX not affected

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SCA and ARN play out DAB+ stations locally - so there’s no guarantee that adjoining markets are in sync.

Might be true for some but I checked the other day and a couple of the stations were identical. It just seems like a missed opportunity that there are now two large adjoining DAB+ areas and thought isn’t being put into making the drive down the Pacific Motorway seamless. I get it that up until now it’s not been necessary because there are hundreds of Ks between metro areas.

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I got a response from ABC Audience Support

Thank you very much for letting us know about this, we really want to hear when things like this are happening.
The PID for DAB+ channels is consistent nationally. We set that up in roughly 2021. We also have the ability to switch on freqency following rules rather than a PID eg use AM/FM frequencies where there is no RDS or digital info. I’m not certain how we have set up the Gold Coast, but I’ve flagged this with the transmission team.

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